


Basic Chemistry

by 15Strawberries



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Baking, Female Pronouns for Pidge | Katie Holt, Gen, Hunk Stress Bakes and That's Okay, Hunk is homesick too, spoilers for season two episode five
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-24
Updated: 2017-01-24
Packaged: 2018-09-19 17:28:02
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,211
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9452267
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/15Strawberries/pseuds/15Strawberries
Summary: Hunk has some down time in between battles. He tries to make the most of it.





	

Hunk was tired.

He couldn't sleep. None of them could sleep. They still hadn't figured out how Zarkon was tracking them and until that happened they had to be ready to man the castle's defenses at a moment's notice.

But they were safe enough for now. Shiro was on the bridge ready to sound the alarm the second the Galra fleet showed up again. Coran was down in the engine room trying to figure out what the heck was wrong with the warp core (it was called something else, Hunk knew it was called something else, but remembering Altean technical jargon was hard enough even when his brain _wasn't_ buzzing out of his ears.) The rest of them had been dismissed to rest and recharge however they could. Without sleeping.

Lance and Keith had immediately retreated to their rooms. Pidge had gone to see if she could help Coran while he was still doing his slip 'n slide impression in the engine room. And Hunk . . . .

Hunk had headed down to the kitchen to see if he could figure out his grandmother's snickerdoodle recipe.

Hunk had never understood his dad's stress-baking habit until he became a paladin of Voltron. He wasn't sure how being an operations manager for an extremely experimental cold fusion reactor stacked up against being a defender of the universe, but his dad's habit of coming off a difficult shift and immediately going to the kitchen to make cookies suddenly made _so much sense_.

It was simple. Basic chemistry. And hey, even if you messed up, no one was going to die.

No, really. No one was going to die. Hunk had quizzed Coran up, down and sideways about everything  in the kitchen, tested it to make sure both humans and Alteans could eat it, printed out _proper_ warning labels because Alteans apparently considered _sulphuric acid_ to be 'pleasantly tangy'—

Anyway. Hunk had a cupboard of space baking supplies, and he was going to quiznaking use them.

Salt, space sugar, space flour and space cream of tartar (boy had that been a lucky find) went into a bowl and then were whisked together and set aside. In another bowl he beat space eggs, more space sugar, and space margarine— _margarine_ , Grandma was spinning in her grave, but until he could convince Allura and Coran that lactose wasn't a deadly poison he would have to compromise.

Hunk could make his grandmother's snickerdoodle recipe in his sleep. That was basically what he was doing right now. The oven was preheated, cookie sheets greased, and dough mixed, all without any real conscious thought. Hunk started to relax, the frantic buzzing in his brain settling down into a more focused hum as he pinched off pieces of cookie dough and rolled them between his palms. This was nice. Familiar. Sa—

"Quiznak I don't have cinnamon."

Hunk washed his hands and started going through the cupboards, opening container after container with increasing desperation as he looked for something that might work. He swiped at his eyes, trying not to just curl up into a ball and cry because it was just _cinnamon_ , really, it wasn't that big a deal.

Only, it kinda was.

Hunk was tired. Hungry for anything that wasn't food goo. Still bruised from a battle that they definitely would have lost if Pidge hadn't figured out that new weapon of hers, had been jumped by Zarkon right when they thought it was finally safe to relax, and Hunk just . . . really, really wanted his grandma's snickerdoodles.

Only he couldn't make grandma's snickerdoodles without cinnamon and he didn't have cinnamon and it wasn't like he could go out and get cinnamon from the nearest grocery store because they were in quiznaking _space_ and Zarkon's most wanted besides and even if he could go shopping there was no guarantee that aliens even _had_ cinnamon or space cinnamon or whatever and oh, God, he was never going to be able to make any of his grandma's recipes ever again—

There. Tucked in the very back of his edibles cupboard. A small white box filled with blue something or other that immediately changed state from solid to liquid when he poured some onto his hand. But it smelled and tasted like cinnamon.

Hunk looked from the tiny box in his hand to the admittedly huge amount of cookie dough he'd made. Then he pulled out another bowl, emptied the box into it, then poked at the thick, gelatinous liquid barely covering the bottom of the bowl, glancing around the kitchen, at all of his supplies and equipment.

Basic chemistry, huh?

* * *

"I thought you were exhausted," Pidge remarked from where she was perched on the counter, looking at the empty container of space cinnamon, "Why are you making cookies?"

"Because baking clears my head Pidge, okay?" Hunk sighed. He didn't mind Pidge doing her little extrovert thing where she came in and started asking questions about _everything_ , but really, he was in the middle of an experiment. He set the tray down on the counter, well away from Pidge. The space snickerdoodles were incredibly efficient at shedding heat, but better safe than sorry, especially with how high he'd set the temperature this time. "I thought you were going to help Coran with the warp core?"

"One mention of the slipperies and he got all sensitive and kicked me out," She said, still examining the container, "I hate not being able to read Altean, what is this stuff? Are you sure you're making food?"

"You're gonna try to tell me that _these_ aren't cookies?" He asked sarcastically, holding one of the translucent blue circles up to the light.

They weren't even close to looking like his grandma's snickerdoodles. At least this batch was solid; the control batch was still uncooked in the four hundred degree oven after almost two hours, when the original recipe had called for only nine minutes of baking.

It looked good. It _smelled_ good.

Time for the taste test.

 _Ow_ , owwwww, ow ow ow, okay there was no _way_ that was organic anymore!

Pidge could never know his shame.

"Okay" he choked out, "I might have over-baked them."

Pidge rolled her eyes, slid off the counter and wandered out the door.

"Wait, where are you going? You don't wanna stick around for the next batch?" Hunk asked.

"Nah," Pidge waved, "I'm off to see if there's an Altean language program in the systems anywhere. Have fun with your baking."

"Hey, when you learn Altean come back and tell me what this stuff actually is." Hunk called after her as the automatic door slid shut.

He slipped off his hot pads and went over to the clipboard that had been left on the breakfast table. _Trial thirty five,_ he wrote, _substance finally solidified when baked for ten minutes at three thousand fifty degrees kelvin. Substance now appears crystalline, translucent. Presumably still edible, though it easily withstood human bite pressure._ _Still blue. Still smells like cinnamon._

He went back to the cookies, moving them onto a cooling rack, then reset the oven and spooned more of the cookie dough onto the tray for trial number thirty six.

What he was doing right now couldn't exactly be called baking anymore, but hey, basic chemistry. It still counted.

**Author's Note:**

> This fic was heavily inspired by [this](http://maychorian.tumblr.com/post/156252711141/hunk-thoughts-regarding-season-2) post.
> 
> . . . Also, if anyone wants to try actually making snickerdoodles, this [recipe](http://thepioneerwoman.com/food-and-friends/snickerdoodles/) looks pretty good.


End file.
